DAY 30 Feb 11 - Scenic Cruising Amalia Glacier & Canal Sarmiento, Chile.

Its name, Canal Sarmiento, or Channel Sarmieno is an homage to the Spanish sailor Don Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa who sailed these coasts in the years 1579 and 1580. The canal is a very long stretch of water of over 60 miles in length.

The Amalia Glacier descends from the Andes Mountains. Because of the glacier's immense weight, the oxygen has been pressed out of the ice, giving it an amazingly beautiful crystalline appearance. The glacier, also known as Skua Glacier, is a tidewater glacier located in Bernardo O'Higgins National Park. Between 1945 to 1986 its area retreated nearly 5 miles. The South Pategonia Ice-field (SPI) in which Amalia is found, extends north-south for 220 miles, between 48°20’ S and 51°30’ S, at an average longitude of 73°30’ W. Its mean width is 22 miles, and the minimum width is 5 miles.

The SPI is divided into 48 major outlet glaciers and over 100 small cirque and valley glaciers. These glaciers flow from the Patagonia Andes to the east and west, generally terminating with calving fronts in freshwater lakes (east) and Pacific Ocean fjords (west). The outlet glaciers share a vast and relatively flat plateau with an average altitude of about 4500-5000 feet.

Not only is this a wonderful day to be cruising through these enormous glacial ice-fields it's also a wonderful day because it is the anniversary of my birthday too. A quick glance in the mirror this morning revealed no further deterioration in the cragginess of my facial appearance and no obvious signs of even more grey hairs on my head.

Yesterday evening we left the shelter of the inland waterways and again headed out into the Pacific Southern Ocean. Once again the seas were disturbed although not as viciously as with the beam sea we had experienced earlier in the day.

Maria managed to make dinner and we dined with friends Henk and Lucia who had asked us to join their table for dinner. As it was my birthday tomorrow (today now in fact) Lucia had organised the kitchen to produce a celebratory cake which was accompanied by the Indonesian waiting staff singing their own version of happy birthday. Thank you Lucia.

After dinner Maria thought it better to call it a day and we returned to our comfortable stateroom. Unlike the previous night we slept very well as the ship sailed through the Trinidad Channel thus avoiding going anywhere near the churning waters of the Pacific Ocean.

What a sight greeted us as we awoke at shortly after 7 o'clock this morning.

Following navigation through the Andres and Pitt Channels we headed down the Amalia Fjord with soaring snow peaked mountains on each side.

It was cold, a crisp biting cold that suggested I needed another layer of clothes on me.

After a quick visit to my usual haunt for breakfast I returned to the cabin with some subsidence for Maria and then it was time to go to the top of the ship, to the Sports Deck, to survey the considerable breathtaking scenery all around us.

However, before going off I opened a really funny birthday card from Maria, something about 'facing it like a man' to the sound of appropriate music from a Clint Eastwood film, one from Henk and Lucia and another from Shannon our travel agent representative. In addition, in the course of the morning I received two phone calls wishing me a happy birthday. One call was from the staff on the Front Desk and the other from Housekeeping. Now that was a really nice touch by them.

To my absolute surprise someone had put a big 'Happy Birthday' sign on the outside of our cabin door. Wow what a day for a birthday!

The scenery really did take ones breath away as the Prinsendam very slowly edged its way down the fjord towards the probable highlight of today's scenic cruising, the amazing Amalia Glacier.

Frank Buck-ingham was soon on the ship's air waves giving one of his legionary detailed descri-ptions of what we were about to see. All kinds of facts and figures were randomly thrown at us followed by over an hours worth of information of encyclopedic proportions. He is some kind of hero is our Frank.

The ship continued manoeur-ing very slowly getting closer and closer to the massive tidewater glacier.

A ship's tender was soon lowered into the ice cold waters with the ship's photographer on board. The picture shows just how small the tender looks against the back ground of the huge glacier. His mission was to take some incredible and unique pictures of the Prinsendam against the backdrop of the glacier.

No doubt he would later sell a good quantity of these pictures to the passengers.

Small icebergs that were once part of the glacier and had now broken away from its mass ominously surrounded the ship as it slowly turned . Frank informed us that the visible part of the bergs were about one tenth of their actual size, the rest lurking anonymously beneath the water.

One is moment-arily reminded of what happened to the Titanic, especially when aware of the life boat being launched with the photographer on board, but at least neither the ship's orchestra nor the Adagio String Quartet could be heard playing laments on the quarter deck and Frank was still talking!!

Wow it was cold out here on our verandah calling for hats and in the case of dear Maria, gloves too. It surely can't get much better than this can it? Just think it's my birthday too!!

We have a massive amount of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks in the cabin now. What with birthday present bottles and other goodies we have received recently, plus of course the daily gratis supply of Cokes, ginger ales, tonics and Sprites, our cabin is beginning to look more and more like the saloon bar in a local pub.

It is now time for a serious attempt to reduce the drink mountain. As a first step we have invited the Fowlers and Gonsalves (our Canadian based friends), plus Henk and Lucia Barnhoorn (hosts from our travel agent CSI) for pre-dinner drinks at 6.15.

While touring the ship earlier today I bumped into the ship's Hotel Manager, Françoise Birada, and extended an invitation for him too to pop in for a celebratory drink with us.

Hopefully they will all amply contribute to the lessening of our drink lake.

Sorting out photos from this morning's marathon photo shoot was the next job on the agenda which Maria took on with relish. Our 4GB SDHC card must have been nearly full following the hour plus time spent at the glacier and beyond.

Once we left the Amalia Gacier, a close-up photo of which is shown here, the rest of the day was taken up sailing various southerly courses through Channels Sarmiento, Smyth and Grey. The general features here are of high and abrupt shores with innumerable peaks and headlands. At some places the channels are only 900 feet wide and the cliffs rise up to a height of more than 4000 feet. Breathtaking scenery indeed.